Executive Function Strategies to Support Your Gifted Students: A handbook for educators K-12 (Supporting Gifted Learners)

Supporting Gifted Learners Series

Why do your most capable students sometimes produce your least complete work?

The answer, in most cases, is executive functioning — the brain's system for planning, organizing, initiating tasks, managing time, and regulating emotion. For gifted and twice-exceptional learners, executive functioning frequently develops years behind intellectual ability, creating a gap that gets misread as laziness, defiance, or lack of effort. It is none of those things. And it responds to teaching.

Executive Function Strategies to Support Your Gifted Students, by Adam C. Laningham, M.Ed., and Denise Michele Hicks, Ed.S., NGSX, MCP, is the practical, classroom-ready resource that closes that gap — for individual teachers and for entire school teams.

What's inside:

• A clear framework of Nine Core Executive Functioning Skills, with observational checklists for each
• A complete K–12 Classroom Activity Library — organized by grade band (K–2, 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12) and by specific EF skill — with dozens of ready-to-use activities
• Chapters on gifted learners, twice-exceptional profiles (ADHD, autism, dyslexia, anxiety), and culturally and linguistically diverse gifted students
• Built-in Professional Development support: every chapter includes a PD Facilitator Box with discussion prompts, a group activity, and a staff takeaway — no separate facilitator's guide needed
• Teacher Scripts, Research Notes, Case Studies, and Reflection Questions throughout

A single teacher can read this independently and use activities the next day. A full school team can use it as the backbone of a yearlong professional learning sequence. No outside consultant required.

If you've ever described a capable student as "not living up to their potential" — this book will change how you see them, and give you and your colleagues a shared language and toolkit for what to do next.

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